And me not only the SW but also to show that whit the SW board down I have to much time to spend on my one timeline which I regard as fun but I need my portion of healthy SW discussions so that I can talk to more people then my self.

Ye am getting worried as my SW redraw symptoms are getting worse and I need my daily SW to get idea for my one timeline so can you please give us a update on how long it will take for the board to be back online.

have an update finally to my IO Italian Fleet story whenever the board comes back up so I can post it

Bobby have a question - you mentioned Italy lost its Marine division which I assume was the joint German/Italian division that was used in Africa and Malta. You mentioned another Marine division being put together by Germany - was this also lost in the Atlantic or was it still being formed and thus not part of the operation?

I hope sow that the board eventually comes back online again as like me the SW redraw is painfully beginning to show itself but lucky I have some things to occupy myself with until the board comes back online.

My offer for a topic concerning the SW timeline on my DDW forum is still open as I really need the SW juice to get my creativity back as I spend way to much time on my one timeline so please bobby speak and give us the word about when whey can discuses your great work again.

Bobby told me he is talking to David to get the board back up as soon as he can - but no date yet. Also he has been very busy so that is why no new update in a while.

Oh for CT and CJ (the resident naval experts here) one little thing - asked him about the new Italian BB and the German marine division and here is what he answered.

BB sunk at the Canaries was an older early 40's model (assume he means a Littorio?). The newest Italian BB is still fitting out at the dockyards in Italy.

Also most of the new German marine division and the older Italian/German division was lost in the Canaries/Madeiras during the fighting - the only ones still part of the Axis forces were either wounded men who were evacuated before the Allies closed the supply lanes or men who were recovering from wounds in earlier operations (i.e. at rest and refit centers in Europe) and who never were shipped to the Canaries.

Hey I have a question which probably should have been posted on the Discussion board, but I'll put it here since it doesn't work and I cant post there anyway.

I was reading through the old posts, and came across this:

January 5th 1945

Germany commissions the 'Lightning Strike', a new class of light 'missile frigate' armed with dozens of new TV-guided glide rockets, advanced new radar gear, and only anti-aircraft guns and light cannon for close-in defense.

Now this was commissioned before the whole world hit the fan so to speak, but I don't remember hearing anything about these Lightning Strike class frigates again. What's happened to them?

Craig I remember a discussion about this - apparently the missiles were not as accurate, nor did they have the success rate the Germans hoped for - which I am assuming they found out during the Fatherland breakout.

They apparently removed the missiles and converted the ships to either destroyers or light cruisers. I am assuming the Germans are still working on the technology and may redeploy it once it works.

Have posted in the SW wiki but I will post it here so more can help me solve this question.

Olefin after doing some rehearse both for my on DDW timeline and the Argentina submarine SW topic I found out that it was a tradition to name the submarines in Argentina after a province beginning with the letter S which limit the name to six what are the names of the General Belgrano class submarines the are building could it be that the submarines use the same method the German using like example the U-001 to U-020 ore something else.

These appear to be named after heroes of Argentina, at least initially. I suspect they will use generals and admirals for names - most likely heroes of the Liberation War and the War of the Triple Alliance and then once they run out of those names they will switch to other names. Possibly they may use different batches for naming conventions - i.e. subs 1-6 are generals, 7-12 are provinces, 13-20 may be numeric.

Olefin here - from what Bobby said they provided them with older coastal submarines.

In OTL the Germans built 52 coastal submarines of type I and II. Thus the 25 they gave to Argentina and to Peru (Bobby said a similar deal of subs and destroyers was going to both countries) then they may all be the Type I and II subs.

The XXIII subs would be new subs at the time of WWII starting in 1945 - so most likely they werent provided to Argentina.

However they may have given a couple to them - but at this time unless Bobby can confirm that I would limit the Argentine coastal subs to Type II subs.

Same here Roel - this is getting to be a very very long time without the board being up. While fanactics like you, me, CT, CJ, etc..(no insult intended to anyone) wont give up on the board there may be others that do due to the long downtime. And that would be a shame if that happened.

Craig have you tried emailing Roel or Bobby directly to see what is up with you not getting added? They should be able to do something - the safeguards were put up to keep spammers out, but to let people who really wanted to be on the board in.

Course I am starting to get worried that maybe the board is down for good - its been over a month and I dont see any sign of progress yet.

Hi about the being added as a member to the board yes the safeguards should let people in but as whey now there where so many spammers online at the time the board went dark I wonderd that anybody could join.

I hope the forum eventfully comes back online as I gaiting a DDW meltdown from creating so many new topic son my forum to compacted for the SW withdrawal I still suffering but I really hop that bobby can give us some news regrinding the forum.

My offer is as always open to host a topic on my forum ore even to create a emergency forum where whey can go to.

Now that exams are done with I can start paying some attention to things around here again. I too am a little concerned about the board being down for so long. For what it's worth, the SW4.0 board is still up if anyone wants to go there for the time being: http://www.runboard.com/bshatteredworld

Regarding the German missile ships, from what Bobby said they were found to not yet be ready for prime time - basically their anti-ship missiles were outranged by carrier aircraft and long-range targeting was a problem. Given that they were custom-built ships, it's not very likely that they could be converted to gun CLs or DDs given the nature of the handling arrangments for the missiles. At best they could pull the above deck launchers and load them with light AAA.

That's interesting news about the Italian BB that was lost. That puts the RM down to four BBs at best for the time being - two old and two modern. And that's if they didn't pull the two old ones out of service to provide the crews for their new BCs. The RM vs. RN odds in the Med are probably a lot closer that we had guessed.

Olefin, I'm glad you got back to your story. I'm looking forward to reading the new chapters.

Ok back to the point have question regarding the Argentine General Belgrano class submarines as the are some in service which class should whey put them and are the based on a German U-boat class which the probably sold to Argentina.

And cj about the SW4.0 board I fear that if bobby dos not do something the board will be remove in which case whey will loses valuable data.

Roel - the Belgrano sub was based on an older German design - which one bobby didnt elaborate on. I would think we are talking one of the classic WWII OTL designs, seagoing not coastal.

CJ - dont forget to add two battlecruisers to the Italian fleet as well - they did lose one but one got back and one never deployed into the Med. I assume your count of 4 BB doesnt include the new one yet since it hasnt been put into fleet service yet?

Argentine Subs: I've always assumed that the ones they are building under license are Type VII boats.

RM Ships: No, I'm not counting the new ship since it sounds like she is still fitting out or on trials. As we've discussed before, the evidence indicates that those "battlecruisers" are more likely large cruisers/cruiser-killers in the vain of the German 'P's or the American 'Alaskas'. I think it's a very real possibility that they pulled the two surviving older BBs out of service to in order to crew the new CVs, BBs, and BCs - that would give them 2+1+1 BB, 2+1 BC/CB, and 1+1 CV. And given the amount of supplies that are getting through to North Africa, they likely had to crew an much larger than OTL number of escorts. .

I agree with you CJ about the larger Italian fleet - for one by now they would have built the entire Capitani Romani class of CL - which would have had at least twelve ships - as well as the Venezia CL's that have figured in my story. The Romani's would have made good convoy escorts.

Add to that the Ariete class torpedo boats (convoy escorts) and most likely a follow up batch of Soldati DD's as well. Plus Bobby's new class of ocean going DD's, of which all that were in commission as of July of 49 were lost in the Atlantic battles.

Some of their manpower question also depends on how many people they rescued from the ships they lost in earlier battles in the Med.

If a lot of those crews survived they may be who is crewing many of the new ships - i.e. look how many got off Repulse and Prince of Wales in OTL versus got off Bismark. Considering where those battles took place the Italians may have been able to recover most of the surviving crews for use in new ships.

The crews in the Altantic battles are gone probably - either dead or sitting in POW camps.

The RM probably did get most of the survivors from the battles in the Med. The thing is, those rebuilds they did on their four old battleships during the 1930s still left them with four very marginal, albeit somewhat faster, ships with an obsolete protection scheme. They were fine when their primary concern was old French battleships that were even more obsolete and the two 'Dunkerques', but taking them into a fleet action in ATL 1949 is a whole different ballgame. Carrier escort is kinda out as the new BC/CB are going to be much better suited to that role and will have less trouble keeping up. I'm not saying the rebuilds were bad ships, but they didn't even come close to the rebuilt 'Queen Elizabeths' let alone the modernized 'Standards' (especially the 'Frankensteins').

I agree with you there CJ - you have to wonder if they did another rebuild with German tech either between the wars or after the butt kicking they took in 1945. Most likely they may have - which is why the Italian BB's arent mentioned much in the interval - maybe the old ones were getting refit again but this time with better torpedo protection, better AA guns and most of all better fire control.

I still dont see the British bringing in a lot of their best BB's into the Med yet though - German and Italian air power is still too strong unless they devote a lot of their own air power to cover them - and until US units show up in strength they have enough to do just keeping their Army alive in Libya.

"Regarding the German missile ships, from what Bobby said they were found to not yet be ready for prime time - basically their anti-ship missiles were outranged by carrier aircraft and long-range targeting was a problem. Given that they were custom-built ships, it's not very likely that they could be converted to gun CLs or DDs given the nature of the handling arrangments for the missiles. At best they could pull the above deck launchers and load them with light AAA. "

Do you think that the new anti-ship missiles the Germans recently deployed in the Canaries can make these ships deployable now or do you think its still too early for a real missile equipped ship yet?

'Conte di Cavour' and 'Giulio Cesare' were rebuilt between 1933-1937. These were pretty extensive rebuilds. They pulled out the 'Q' turret, lengthened the bow, installed new machinery, replaced the superstructure, and rebored the 12" guns to 12.6".

'Andrea Doria' and 'Caio Dulio' were both rebuilt between 1937-1940. These were rebuilt along the same lines as the 'Conte di Cavour' and 'Giulio Cesare'.

About the best they'd get between the end of the Eurasian war and Summer 1945 would be more light AAA if the lessons of the EW allowed for it. The losses they took in Summer 1945 would not have allowed them the luxury of pulling ships from service for a good mid-40s modernization.

As I laid out in my RN fan-fic, I think the surviving 'Queen Elizabeths' would have been placed in reserve by now as a manpower issue. That means the RN pretty much has to commit 'KGVs' or 'Lions' to the Med.

You almost have to wonder if even the KGV's have been put in reserve as well - Britain had to have been having massive oil supply problems during the past few months - they may have put almost all their BB's in reserve until the Canaries operation except the Lions with the Germans basically parking their BB's.

That could explain why the Italians only sortied two BCR and one BB into the Atlantic - maybe the British were very short on BB's and the Italians thought they could get away with it - until the Americans jumped in and threw their calculations of force projection in the toilet.

German Missile Cruisers: I went digging in my files and found an old description Bobby had given. They carried 24 rocket-powered glide bombs with a range of no more than 20km. The missiles used command guidance. Each ship had six launch rails with a reload time of a few minutes (Given OTL USN experience, that reload time is highly unlikely to have worked out in practice.). The ships had six control stations and could keep six birds in the air at one time.

So the real limiting factor is the lack of terminal guidance. But that was a problem that everyone had in the early days - normal electronic emissions alone could screw with the guidance, let alone intentional ECM.

To tell the truth, the best _potential_ missile ships in ATL would have been if the IJN had stuck a bunch of fixed launch rails on the back of 'Tone' and 'Chikuma' in place of the seaplane facilities and loaded them with Okhas. At least the terminal guidance works.

I've got some rough ideas of how I think the German CGs look, but I need to play with MS Paint some and wait for the board to get back up.

RN Fuel Supplies: I'm not sure it's that bad overall. The AfD controls the fields in Persia and southern Iraq, and the Saudi fields came online earlier in ATL. Home Fleet operations may be a bit limited due to fuel issues stemming from the blockade, but they should be OK everywhere else.

Even if the HSF isn't doing much these days, they've still got five battleships and several battlecruisers and large cruisers sitting on the other side of the North Sea and the RM still has at least two BBs and some BCs sitting in the Med. I think the size of the RM deployment into the Atlantic probably had more to do with lack of oilers and not wanting to give the RN's heavy gunships a free shot to cause some havoc in the Med. For all we now know, the HSF made some noises in the North Sea at the same time to try and pin the Home Fleet - it was a joint operation after all.

CJ - did Bobby ever mention if the guided missile cruisers ever saw combat - i.e. during the Fatherland breakout - or were they mothballed prior to the war? There isnt anything in the timeline that mentions if they ever saw combat.

I'm not sure he ever gave any specifics about the employment of the CGs. From what I recall, he just said they were found wanting once they were used in a real battle and not training. I've always operated on the assumption that one went out with the 'Vaterland' group and the others were used off Norway before being placed in reserve. I figure they kept one in service as a test platform and are hoping that technology catches up with the dream before the ships are all useless.

Ok, Bobby and I had this disucssion a very long time ago when he first proposed the missile ships. The problem with this missile ship is that its weapon systems are in reality shorter ranged then the weapons on the ships they would be fighting. A US BAT Glide Bomb had a range of 20 or so miles dropped from over 15,000 feet. What is the range of a german rocket glider launched from sea level realistically going to be...?????? The Answer is not very good for the Germans. Basically you have a light cruiser trying to engage a Battle Ship with Rocket Launched Glide Bombs. And trying to do it while withing the Gunnery Range of 14" to 16" Guns. The rate of fire is going to seriously favor the Battle Ship and the BB can use HE and score proximity Kills on the German Cruiser because its stacking explosive stuff on its deck. Anyway the German Glide Bombs were originaly visually guided into the target which reduces there range even more. If said German cruiser could get withing say 15,000 yards of a Battle Ship it could very well sink one. But the question is where are you going to find a Battle Ship without cruisers and destroyers escorting it and before you get withing range of the Battle Ship the Escorts will be within range of the German Cruiser. I think a cruiser whose main armament is at least as explosive as the Japanese Oxygen Torpedoes does not want to get into a fight with a Baltimore Class Cruiser or even a couple of Large Destroyers.

I am surprised then they havent mounted them on ships in place of torpedoes - they would get less mounts of course - maybe only one missile per side - but 15,000 yards is better range than a torpedo has and I assume the warheads were about the same size. Plus you can fire a whole bunch of unguided torpedoes and not get a single hit - whereas even a 25% success rate with four launches would mean at least one hit.

Which is not to say that I would want a ship loaded with only missiles. The Tone idea you had CJ was a good one - a ship that still has a good amount of guns and then several missile mounts as well - which is very close to how missiles were added to WWII cruisers that stayed in commission in the US and British navies.

You wonder if the Germans may put the missiles back into use - but not on anything as large as a cruiser. They should have instead done something like the Osa missile boat - but with only one or two missiles instead of the four the Osa mounted. They would be good boats in places like the Aegean or Balearic Islands or similar places where the fighting is more up close and personal.

Have a feeling the missiles may also have been mounted at Gib - 15,000 yards would cover a lot of the strait - and at the right place would be able to hit anything on the water all the way to the African coast. Put them in armored bunkers and they could take out a lot of ships before they are all knocked out.

And I dont see the US using a ground burst on Gib - the effect would be to make passage thru the Straits deadly for a long long time.

Just remember Oelfin the command station needs to be able to see what its shooting the missile at so putting them up on the mast where the range finders would be on a capital ship might work or up on a tower on shore. The missiles are going to need a smaller but similar launch rail to what the V-1used in OTL. They are not going to be immune to air attack or heavy sea borne artillary.

I think the German Glide Bomb Version which trades altitude for rage and penetration power is capable of sinking older Battle Ships but newer Battle Ships like the Vanguard, KGV, and the Iowa's all have reall substantial deck armor. So no one or two shots equaling a sunk BB like the Older Italian BB's which were sunk by the Germans in OTL. Plus the lower the launch height the less of an Impact you will have for Armor Penetration. Over all there rate of fire is going to be less than say a Shore Based 14" Gun and there guidance will be susceptible to everything from AAA, Smoke Screens, and Intentional Jamming [ECM].

At his point in ATL, anti-ship missiles are no silver bullet, but they are another arrow in the quiver. We're at the point in ATL where a lot of things that we didn't see until well into the 1950s in OTL are going to start showing up in a crude form. I think it's important to remember how many things in OTL were on the verge of being a workable weapon when they were canceled becasue they "next best thing" was just around the corner - and there were a few cycles of that.

All things being equal, those early missiles were outranged by 6" guns. Not a recipe for success given the rate of fire for 6" guns.

I think crude FAC-Ms used in coastal or restricted waters are going to be the best bet. They can probably play with destroyers alright under the right circumstances. But they are horribly vulnerable to airpower.

You may be able to replace the torpdo tubes with launch rails on a limited basis on surface combatants, but it won't be on anything like a 1-1 basis. If you're going to pull TTs, it's a better use of weight and deck space to add AAA. I'm not saying it can't or won't be done, I just think that more AAA will provide a bigger bang for the buck.

The shore-based weapons won't be perfect and will lack some of the punch of their air-launched cousins, but they do add one more dimension that must be countered.

Oh, and I'll say again that the Axis didn't need Gibraltar to close the straits to AfD traffic.

Side note, but it was a 'Littorio' class ship that they RM lost to the Germans, not one of the old ones. That being said, 'Warspite' and a US CL survived hits, so it's partly a role of the dice. Though I think US and RN damage control skills had more than a little to do with it.

CJ, I also think it has something to do with the condition of the Italian Ships sailing to be intered and with minimal crews and minal damage control training. I mean how long had those ships been bottled up in port. They also lacked any pretense at Air Cover. The german bombers had perfect test targets...????? And yes the Warspite and a US CL both survived hits and its probably entirely due to really good damage control and where they were hit.

But I agree mounting a weapon that is out ranged by a US 6"/47 Caliber gun with a rate of fire of over 10 Rounds per minute and that has Radar Fire control is asking to be butchered by the First Light Cruiser in the Enemy Battle Forces screen you met. Unless the Germans decided to put this on a heavy armored ship which since the missile have to be outside they cant the technology is probably best for shore based and air launched weapons. Cruisers are just to expensive to be turned into self immolating wrecks.